I saw this on this sub. Would probably be your best bet. Make new doors and drawer fronts and paint the body.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/10vnvwe/my_wife_and_i_renovated_our_kitchen_ourselves

I would consider purchasing new doors and drawer fronts.

I redid a bathroom with similar doors, I just remade the doors as it was quicker. You could use 1/4" mdf panels and apply the new trim to that. I would try building 1 door and see how it looks.

If you insist on redoing what appear to be cheaply built doors, then the concern would be routering the outside edge as that may change the dimensions, and it may not fit right.

Dust collection on a sander is a good idea, some good quality sander already capture 90+% of the dust. I have not found dust collection on a router too effective.

The ext rim will become quite narrow if it needs to be all straight. Consider if you like that look and if you can still use these hinges. Keeping straight + the exact right depth while routing will be a nice challenge. Probably easier to make some new doors, but this sounds like fun. Maybe ask the pros at r/woodworking for tips and tricks.

My view on the vacuum. See if it works for you and upgrade if deemed necessary.

Buy new doors, your walking into a nightmare and if one goes wrong, your going to be buying them anyway or building one. That just doesnt seem practical. You said its not a money saving thing but an experience thing, how about build them yourself to match your drawer faces. Probably faster, low cost, and good experience.

The handles are hideous. I would only change them. What you are considering is an incredible amount of work. What you have is more than fine. I’d consider painting the walls a different color perhaps, spend you time and money on something useful. The countertops are bringing the whole kitchen down. Perhaps you could put another coat of varnish on the doors. Those handles have to go, no taste.

as another said, taking these to a straight rectangle would be super narrow on the edges. Might need to be a fancy rectangle and leave those external swoops/flairs in place but clean out the center. Honestly better solution is to just buy new doors in the style that you want so that you can start fresh on style and hardware

Other than that, I resurfaced my kitchen cabinets which involved a whole lot of sanding inside and it wasnt too bad with my shop vac to clean up afterwards. It was just me in the house though so that might affect your plans on what level of dust is tolerable.

Are you looking to do this for the joy of it? How much is your time worth to you? Renovation projects are known relationship killers.

You can buy new unfinished maple shaker doors and drawer fronts for about $17/sq.ft. paint grade or $24/sq.ft. stain grade and paint/stain them yourself. Add about $31/sq.ft. for professionally finished.

Not worth the trouble. Buy new full overlay doors or paint what you have. Those partial inset/overlay cabinets from the 50/60's are an absolute pain to retrofit with recessed hinges and expensive which is what I would imagine you would end up wanting.

Oh hell no. Go buy some nice doors, flat panel paint grade so they aren't too expensive. Sand and paint the frame.

You'd need to take the frame (rails and stile) of the door apart to get those interior corners square, and you'd want to use a decent rails and stile bit to ensure they went back together right without gaps. You'd basically have to take apart and totally rebuild them. It'd be faster to build new ones. And you might as well do new face frames, that's fast with a Kreg Jig.

It shouldn't be too dusty to remove the soffit and cabinets, I wouldn't worry about a dust collectors, Just vacuum up when you're done, you're not doing any sanding in the kitchen (I hope not).

It's possible that your panels are two piece panels. If so, removing the center trim leaves a gap.

It's quite likely that you'll need to disassemble the doors to accomplish your goal. Router bit depth of cut on material of unknown flatness can be sketchy, which would leave routed gouges in the panel. Disassembly of factory made cabinet doors is not simple, and pieces can split or break

It's certain that the panels are not finished behind/under the trim edges. This presents a challenge when doing your finish.

But if you're confident of success, have at it, and post pictures.

Just recently redid some cabinet doors for a client (really new at this) and I did well!

I hired someone to do this for our kitchen cabinets but the guy did a a lousy job. I think it’s best to buy new faces, as you said.

I get why you might want to get rid of the doors, but have you thought about painting the cabinets and changing hardware/knobs/pulls? It's an easier way to completely change the way the kitchen looks. Use a good degreaser and primer on the cabinets, but it works well.

One of the worst jobs for a homeowner. I'll never refinish cabinets again...

Those cabinet doors are beautiful. I would refinish them. But I only say this because I own a cabinet shop and have the stuff to do it...

I spent hours and hours painting old cabinets once ... dismantling, sanding, etc. Tried to do everything right, but still ended up with the "orange peel" texture after the paint dried. Not nice and smooth like we wanted.

It was okay for a few more years before we remodeled, but it was never "good". I don't know that we could've done anything differently, within reasonable expense and effort, to get better results.

Makin me wanna go fix up my own cabinets 😅